Fourteen Days - by The Authors Guild & Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston (Hardcover)

About the Book

"One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants, some of whom have barely spoken to each other, become real neighbors"--

Book Synopsis

Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice--from Margaret Atwood and Celeste Ng to Tommy Orange and John Grisham.

One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants--some of whom have barely spoken to each other--become real neighbors. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn't escape when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming, and ultimately surprising narrative, Fourteen Days reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.

Includes writing from: Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Joseph Cassara, Jennine Capó Crucet, Angie Cruz, Pat Cummings, Sylvia Day, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Maria Hinojosa, Mira Jacob, Erica Jong, CJ Lyons, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Mary Pope Osborne, Douglas Preston, Alice Randall, Ishmael Reed, Roxana Robinson, Nelly Rosario, James Shapiro, Hampton Sides, R.L. Stine, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Monique Truong, Scott Turow, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rachel Vail, Weike Wang, Caroline Randall Williams, De'Shawn Charles Winslow, and Meg Wolitzer!

Review Quotes

A Lit Hub "Most Anticipated Books of 2022" * A Hartford Courant "Highly Anticipated Book" * A Readers Digest "New Books We Can't Wait to Read" * A PBS "Monthly Book Recommendation" * A New York Times "New Book to Read" * An Amazon Editor's Pick * The Messenger's "10 Must Read Books" -- -

"An immensely enjoyable product of an immensely unenjoyable time, Fourteen Days is lively, freewheeling and, with its skillfully paced denouement - the super herself's tale - an impressive achievement."
-- The Guardian

"Paradise for avid readers." -- Los Angeles Times

"A rich melting pot of characters and genres. . . . A valuable reminder that stories can teach, console, provide a place of acceptance and perhaps even change their readers (or listeners)." -- Financial Times

"Poignant and emotionally resonant. . . . Should you wait until you're finished to read the end notes that detail who wrote what?. . . I guarantee some of the matches--and the way the stories are thrown together--will surprise you." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"An interesting experiment in collective storytelling." -- Literary Hub

"Proves that even a global pandemic can't curb creativity . . . that the stories we leave behind are what makes us human." -- Associated Press

"These stories introduce a theme of diversity that's one of the joys of the book. There are ghost stories, a war story, many tales of betrayal and revenge, and a report on Shakespeare's plague experience by scholar James Shapiro. . . . A multicultural tribute to the New York lockdown experience. . . . Moving and . . . funny." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Beguiling. . . . Fans of literary puzzles will find this worthwhile." -- Publishers Weekly

"...the storytellers are splendidly diverse in race, age, gender, ethnicity, and calling....Putting a bold new twist on the plague novel, this bountiful, unpredictable, witty, and affecting tale-of-tales is made all the more intriguing by the fact that it's a collaboration by 36 exceptional North American writers....This enthralling novel of many voices and moods dramatizes the transformation of isolation into community via stories and explores a grand spectrum of human experiences." -- Booklist (starred review)

"Reading Fourteen Days is like sitting by a campfire, with characters taking turns telling tales about their lives."
-- The Economist

"Highly entertaining." -- Berkshire Edge

"The stories lead toward an overall point about how people form communities. When the group offers hospitality toward the end, it is apparent that the individual storytellers, for all their differences, have become a community. It's a sign of hope and resilience for humanity." -- Daily Kos

"The publication of Fourteen Days could not have been more timely...The power of much of the writing here is undeniable, as is the sense of personal testimony." -- The Guardian

About the Author

MARGARET ATWOODis the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid's Tale (now a Hulu series) and its sequel The Testaments, her novels include The Blind Assassin (winner of the Booker Prize), Alias Grace (winner of the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy), The Robber Bride, Cat's Eye, The Penelopiad, The Heart Goes Last, and Hag-Seed, a novel revisitation of Shakespeare's play The Tempest, for the Hogarth Shakespeare Project. Her latest book of short stories is Stone Mattress: Nine Tales. She is also the author of the graphic novel Angel Cat­bird (with co-creator Johnnie Christmas). Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.